LUSTRATION

(Lat. Iustro, / purify.) In Roman Antiquities, a sacrifice by which the Romans purified their cities, fields, armies, or people, defiled by any crime or impurity. There were various manners of performing this ceremony, according to the nature of the lustration. When Servius Tullius had numbered the Roman people, he purified them, as they were a embled in the Campus Martius, by causing a young pig, a sheep, and a bull, just sacrificed, to be paraded round them. Before the celebration of the Ludi Seculares, which took place only once in a century, the populace was purified hy a little sulphur, bitumen, and, perfume, fixed to a piece of fur called tceda, which was lighted, and which thus circulated the smoke around them The army was purified by causing the soldiers to defile be [s. 706]